> This is taking the objective of taxes to an extreme: redistribution of resources from the wealthiest to the poorest. You say that like it's a bad thing. Woul

> This is taking the objective of taxes to an extreme: redistribution of resources from the wealthiest to the poorest. You say that like it's a bad thing. Would you prefer to have poor people dying in the streets? The measure of civilization since the French Revolution has not been how a country treats its wealthy, but how it treats the poorest. As societies, we have agreed that humans have a right to life and happiness but for the most part we're still too much in love with the myth of merit to follow the consequences of this idea -- and it is certainly in the interest of the wealthy and powerful that this should continue. It flatters a man's self-love to believe that he has earned his place in life by his own sweat and toil, when the reality is that if divested of social relations and one's normal milieu very few of us would rise to any degree of prominence. We have slowly accepted the idea that hardship, debility, or infirmity should not necessarily be a judgement against a person's worth, but we are too infatuated with ourselves to believe it wholeheartedly. And so we grant a basic existence, but conditionally: only those who meet an arbitrary moral standard are permitted to live. Basic income recognizes that imposing that moral standard is itself immoral. If you agree that citizens have the right to not die in the streets, or at the least that it is unseemly for a wealthy society to permit such, then you cannot argue against a basic income with any degree of consistency.